Then I noticed, in the waning light, a tall guy in a leather jacket with a mullet walk onto the field. It took me a few seconds to recognize the tow truck driver from last night. He stood there for a few minutes, watching us lose, and then during the break I went up to him.
“Hey, Kurt,” I said.
“Hey.”
“You here to play?”
“Looks like you guys could use another player.”
Everyone was cool with it except, of course, Trevor Allard. We called a time-out, and we all huddled around Cal Taylor while Kurt hung back a respectful distance.
“He’s not an Entronics employee,” Trevor said. “You can’t play if you don’t have a valid employee number. That’s the rules.”
I wasn’t sure whether Trevor was just being his usual priggish self, or he’d heard that I’d put in for the promotion that he probably figured had his name on it.
Festino, who enjoyed twitting Trevor, said, “So? If they challenge him, he just says he’s a contract employee and didn’t know he wasn’t eligible.” He took advantage of the break to furtively slip the little bottle of Purell out of his pocket and clean his hands.
“A contract employee?” Trevor said with disgust. “Him?” As if a bum had just wandered onto the field from the street, reeking of cheap booze and six months of body odor. Trevor wore long cargo shorts and a faded Red Sox cap, the kind that comes prefaded, which he wore backwards, of course. He had a pukka shell necklace and a Rolex, the same kind of Rolex as Gordy had, and a T-shirt that said LIFE IS GOOD.
“You ever ask the Charles River guys for their photo IDs?” said Festino. “How do we know they don’t have their own ringers, from the Yankees farm team?”
“Or some guy named Vinny from the mailroom,” said Taminek, a tall, scrawny guy who did inside sales. “Anyway, Hewlett-Packard uses ringers all the time.”
“Yo, Trevor, you’re not objecting because this guy’s a pitcher, are you, dude?” Gleason razzed his buddy. He was an overdeveloped lunk with Dumbo ears, a lantern jaw, a blond crew cut, and bright white choppers that were way too big for his mouth. He’d recently grown a bristly goatee that looked like pubic hair.
Trevor scowled and shook his head, but before he could say anything further, Cal Taylor said, “Put him in. Trevor, you go to second.” And he took a swig from his paper bag.
All anyone had to say was “new hire,” and there were no questions asked. Kurt didn’t look like a member of the Band of Brothers, but he could have been a software engineer or something, as far as the Charles River team knew. Or a mailroom guy.
Kurt was assigned to bat third in the lineup-not fourth, like in a real baseball team, but third, because even in his Jack Daniel’s stupor, Cal Taylor understood that three batters would probably mean three outs, and we wanted to give the new guy a chance to show his stuff. And maybe save our asses.
Taminek was on first, and there was one out, when it was Kurt’s turn at bat. I noticed he hadn’t been warming up but had instead been standing there quietly, watching the Charles River pitcher and captain, Mike Welch, pitch. As if he were watching tapes in the clubhouse.
He stepped up to the plate, took a few practice swings with his battered old aluminum bat, and hammered a shot to left-center. The ball sailed over the back fence. As Taminek, and then Kurt, ran home, the guys cheered.
Kurt’s homer was like an electric shock from those ER paddles. All of a sudden we started scoring runs. By the top of the fourth, we had five runs. Then Kurt took the mound to pitch to a big, beefy Charles River guy named Jarvis who was one of their sluggers. Kurt let loose with a wicked, blistering fastball, and Jarvis swung and missed, his eyes wide. You’d never think a softball could travel so fast.
Kurt threw an amazing rise ball, then a change up, and Jarvis had struck out.
Festino caught my eye. He was grinning.
Kurt proceeded to strike out two more guys with a bewildering and unhittable assortment of drop curves and rise balls.
In the fifth inning, we managed to load the bases, and then it was Kurt’s turn at bat. He swung lefty this time, and once again drove the ball somewhere into the next town, trimming the Charles River lead to one.
Kurt struck them out, one two three, in the sixth, and then it was our turn at bat. I noticed that Trevor Allard was no longer complaining about our ringer. He hit a double, Festino singled, and by the time I struck out, we were up by two. Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, Kurt had struck out their first batter and allowed two hits-only because of our lousy fielding-when their guy Welch hit a slow grounder. Kurt scooped it up, fired to second, where Allard caught it, stepped, and threw to first. Taminek caught it and held it high for the third out. A double play, and we’d actually won our first game since prehistoric times.
All the guys thronged around Kurt, who shrugged modestly and gave his easy smile and didn’t say too much. Everyone was talking and laughing loudly, exuberantly, narrating instant replays, reliving the double play that ended the game.
The inviolable tradition after each game was for our opponents to join us for food and beer and tequila shots at a nearby bar or restaurant. But we noticed that the young studs from Charles River were heading sullenly for their German cars. I called out to them, but Welch, without turning around, said, “We’re going to pass.”
“I think they’re bummed out,” said Taminek.
“I think they’re in a state of shock,” said Festino.
“Shock and awe,” said Cal Taylor. “Where’s our MVP?”
I looked around and saw Kurt slipping out to the parking lot. I chased up to him and invited him to join us.
“Nah, you guys probably want to hang by yourselves,” he said. I could see Trevor, standing at his silver Porsche, talking to Gleason, who was sitting in his Jeep Wrangler Sahara, top down.
“It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s totally loose. Believe me, the guys would love to have a drink with you.”
“I don’t drink anymore, man. Sorry.”
“Well, whatever. Diet Coke. Come on.”
He shrugged again. “Sure you guys aren’t going to mind?”
7
I felt like I’d brought Julia Roberts to audition for the high-school play. All of a sudden I was Mister Popular, basking in the reflected glory. We all gathered around a long table at the Outback Steakhouse, a five-minute drive away, everyone jazzed from our comeback-from-oblivion victory. Some ordered beers, and Trevor asked for a single-malt Scotch called Talisker, but the waitress didn’t know what he was talking about, so he settled for a Dewar’s. Kurt gave me a look that seemed to communicate secret amusement at what a dick Trevor was. Or maybe I was imagining it. Kurt didn’t know that Gordy drank single-malts too, that Trevor was just sucking up to the boss even though the boss wasn’t there.
Kurt ordered ice water. I hesitated, then did the same. Someone ordered a couple Bloomin’ Onions and some Kookaburra Wings. Festino went to the john and came back wiping his hands on his shirt. “God, I hate those scary cloth roller towels,” he said with a shudder. “That endless, germ-infested loop of fecal bacteria. Like we’re supposed to believe the towel only goes around once.”
Brett Gleason hoisted his mug of Foster’s and proposed a toast to “the MVP,” saying, “You don’t have to buy another drink in this town again.”
Taminek said, “Where’d you come from?”
“Michigan,” Kurt said, with a sly grin.
“I mean, like-you play in college or something?”
“Never went to college,” Kurt said. “Joined the army instead, and they don’t play much softball. Not in Iraq, anyway.”